Every single time (rant)

Off-topic Chatter
1

We have satellite internet provided by ViaSat.

It's just about the only broadband we can get.

The only other choice is another satellite internet company that's even worse.

Sometimes our internet gets so slow that surfing the web is very difficult.

When that happens, I call them up, and I am always polite towards them, and they are always total jerks.

They always try to shame me for using up more than our "allotted" 40GB per month, as if that's the problem.

(The allotment is not enforced, and we use as much internet as we can, which is perfectly normal.)

By the end of the phone call, our internet is almost always back to normal, so I'm glad they can fix the problem, but having to suffer through their rudeness is annoying.

The company must teach their tech support to be jerks, because it happens every single time.

Luckily, I am a techie and I can see through their bs, but I feel sorry for the people that cannot.

And they always want to send someone out to fix the problem at my expense.

I never let them do that, and by the end of the phone call, the internet is usually fine.

Anyways, I'm rambling so I'll end this post soon.

Their tech support is terrible, their prices are high, their internet speed is slow, and I wish there was a better alternative.

/rant

2

I've had abysmal experiences with Spectrum. Organizational incompetence definitely resides there. Once, I took 5 hours talking to 7 people to stop them from permanently deleting my phone number that had been ours for a very long time. It all started when I bought my own modem to save $10/month and called them to configure the new equipment. I unfortunately got an activist tech. I absolutely abhor them but they are the only option here.

3

I have ViaSat as well. Just trying to get by until Starlink or something better comes along.

4

Hope their business tanks and whoever buys their assets actually gives a damn about what they’re doing.

5
6

Didn’t even read the rest of what’s been posted yet, but both of youse answered the question as to why service sucks and they can get away with it. They have no competition! It’s a legal monopoly.

I’m stuck with Spectrum and their ever-increasing prices. My last “deal” ran out a few months ago, and apparently while they can offer you reduced prices if you “bundle” (ie, instead of paying 3× as much by adding teevee and phone, you only pay more than double instead), they have no lower-priced plans for just innernet.

Funny, but even though I can see an Xfinity hotspot when sniffing wifi, Xfinity insists they don’t cover my area, nor does their coverage map come within 3-4 blocks of where I am. I’m telling them, “Here! Take my money and shut up!”, but they won’t, or claim they can’t.

So yeah, Spectrum happily jacks up my monthly prices on a regular basis.

So yeah, I try to run full bandwidth both up’n’down 24/7/365 whenever possible.

’Though I did buy my own cablemodem like 2-3mos after I first signed up with ’em a buncha years ago. At first that was only 5bux/mo extra, then they wanted to hike that up, and I in turn told ’em to take a hike.

7

This somehow reminds me of my time in Tuscaloosa, AL back in 2004, using a 33,600 bps modem and AOL as internet provider. It was a PITA to be slowed down close to zero but at least I mostly had a stable connection. Anyway, I wish you good luck R/C that customer service will get better soon.

8

Effin’ hell!
Yeah, no competition, complete with the attitude of “Who can ya go to? _
Crap like that is why I adore my hometown, where I actually have a choice of Cable Internet Providers.

9

I cut the cable last year and only use the cell phone for internet now. I’m on verizon so an extra $10 a month gets me 15g of high speed hotspot data and unlimited hotspot data at 600k after the 15g is used up.

I’m never going back to cable internet. The monopoly is over for me.

We have 6 people across 3 families on our plan and the total cost per line is $45 with hotspot, $35 without. Unlimited but throttled to 600k after 25g per line.

10

I would do that, but cable price is just that. 59.99 means you get nicked for 59.99, period. With phone service, there are taxes, fees, surcharges, etc., so that you have no idea what you’re gonna get nicked for until it’s done. Hell, we get surcharges for “mass-transit”(!), even.

I also tend to use 25gig in less than a week (usually take X, put back 2X or more), so I’d be throttled down in no time. Otherwise, that’d sound like a decent approach for me to take.

11

Good news, for my family at least.

The internet is working great today!

We're still way over our limit, which is usually the case.

I think ViaSat harps on us for being over our limit to get us to sign up for a more expensive package.

We have one of the cheapest packages, which isn't cheap by the way.

Oh well, at least the internet works like normal most of the time.

12

old school rant here:
DSL.
had it for decades.
the only fails are external:
construction cut the line, etc.
we have a POTS landline, too.
bomb-proof.

when Time-Warner became Spectrum
and TRIPLED our bill, we cut that TV cord.
our library has free DVD’s and we can watch
all the TV we can stand on those interwebs.
even live sports. that used to be a thing.

yes, we are asked to try the latest and greatest.
twice a week some bundle-scam is attempted.
based upon our neighbors’ ongoing experiences
with their cable-connections and web woes,
we will stay with our “bird in the hand”.
and all birds are welcome on our lawn.

13

Back when we lived in Central California, we had DSL, and loved it.

...

Our library has free to borrow DVDs and Blu-rays as well.

The library has been closed for a while due to the pandemic, but my sister used to get movies and TV shows from there all the time.

14

I’m fortunate enough to have moved into an area in my city that has two competing cable providers (Wide Open West and Spectrum). At my last place I only had the choice of Spectrum. WoW has better speeds, prices, and their support hasn’t treated me like a burden. I don’t even mind that it’s clearly outsourced to another country, because they are professional and helpful. Currently quite pleased with $34.99/mo for 200 mbps down for my first year. It’ll go up a little for the second year, but still be cheaper than what Spectrum wants to charge for 100mbps.

15

Over here cable providers are often known for having capacity issues during "prime time", i.e. mostly between 5pm and 9pm speed drops down to only some Mbit/s even if you paid for a plan like 1Gbit/s. Moreover, I do not like the huge asynchrony between downstream (1,000 or 500 Mbit/s) and upstream (5 to 20 Mbit/s). From a technical point of view they could easily offer synchronous speeds in both directions. As much as I hate to live in an overcrowded city it has at least the benefit of choosing between multiple options like VDSL (with or without supervectoring), cable or cellular via 4G/5G.

16

Seems that with so many people “cutting the cord”, cablecos want to rape everyone on innernet to make up for it.

Who needs cable-phone, when ’most everyone has a cellphone. For that matter, you have skype, zoom, any number of ways to yak “online”.

Who needs cable-teevee, when you can stream, log into free (broadcast) teevee, or just “find” movies online. Again, all of it “online”.

And there’s that “online” part, the funnel, the bottleneck, the choke-point, where they know they got ya, and can rape ya on that with whatever they want to charge, especially if they got a legal monopoly in the area. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it except find a pricier crappier alternative, like satellite innernet.

Unless you wanna piggyback onto someone else’s wifi…

17

This is why I consider myself extremely lucky, probably in the 0.001% range in the country because I have actual choice in my suburbanite area.
At least three major player in my town in a state dominated by mostly Comcast.
With that, I have been able to get a fairly good deal on full Gigabit Access to the net for about 90 bux.